BURLINGTON — When John Brumsted arrived at what is now the University of Vermont Medical Center in the 1980s, he was struck by the “inconsistency” between its world class care and aging facilities, he told regulators Monday.
Brumsted, now CEO of the UVM Health Network, a four-hospital system in Vermont and northern New York, said a proposed $187.3 million overhaul of the tertiary inpatient facilities at its Burlington flagship will ensure the building will no longer “inhibit” delivery of that care.
In two days of public hearings that will continue Tuesday, hospital officials are making the case for the planned 180,000-square-foot building that will house 128 single-occupancy rooms. The seven-story structure would be located on the west side of UVM Medical Center’s property in Burlington above the existing emergency department parking lot.
Hospital officials emphasize the project won’t increase inpatient capacity, but will allow them to replace existing double-occupancy rooms that make it difficult to prevent infections, offer privacy and accommodate diagnostic equipment, as well as patients’ families and visitors. The buildings to be replaced are 25 to 60 years old.
They also say the project and the anticipated cost of operating the new building can be paid for without increasing hospital revenue from patients and medical payers, meaning insurers and government programs. It’s expected to cost $16.6 million to operate the completed building, and with more efficient technologies that cost represents potential long-term savings, officials said.
Attorneys with Legal Aid’s Health Care Advocate’s Office have raised concerns that, based on an outside consultant’s report, some financial estimates underlying the hospital network’s claims are “incorrect” and the project could actually “increase rates significantly.”
The Health Care Advocate’s Office has interested party status, and is participating in a regulatory review process now before the Green Mountain Care Board.
The advocates are also concerned that, given the project’s cost, UVM Medical Center isn’t putting enough resources into ensuring parity for patients with mental illness, such as offering them outdoor access or social-recreation space.
“Right now, my understanding is they just have their rooms, and for someone who is mentally ill and maybe there for several months, that’s not a very healing environment,” said Kaili Kuiper, an attorney for the Health Care Advocate.
Marie Cordes of the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals — which represents about 2,000 direct care workers at the hospital — said she’s supportive of offering patients single rooms and improving inpatient facilities.
However, Cordes said she wants to ensure continued direct care worker involvement in the project, and that, once the new facility is running, managers invest in “safe staffing levels.”
Hospital officials touted an open and transparent process that has involved direct care workers as well as patients, their families and other stakeholders, and they pledged that will continue.
Allison Bouchard, an inpatient cardiology nurse who works in a ward the new facility would replace, said patients in double rooms are separated by curtains that offer little privacy when sharing test results and other sensitive information.
The tight spaces such rooms afford frequently require equipment as well as patients and their families to be shifted or removed in the course of treatment, she said, and family and visitors can’t stay overnight.
The regulatory Green Mountain Care Board, which must approve all major construction projects by health care providers, has roughly 120 days left to review the project.
Al Gobeille, the board’s chair, said the project’s path to approval is moving forward under a “cloud” from the Renaissance Project in the mid-2000s, where former executives at the hospital hid the true cost of a major construction project until after it began. That scandal forced many executives to resign and landed former CEO William Boettcher in prison.
Gobeille said he will use the public hearings as an opportunity — in what he called “famous Rumsfeld-speak” referring to the former secretary of defense’s now infamous remarks on the lack of evidence for invading Iraq — to assess “what it is we don’t know we don’t know” about the current major construction project pending before him and the four other board members.
Burlington approved a zoning change in 2009 that will allow UVM Medical Center to build taller buildings at the medical center campus. Last year, the hospital reached an agreement with the University of Vermont that will allow the project to go forward, pending regulatory approval.
The hospital network will break ground on the project as soon as it’s approved, and it will take 38 months to complete. Officials expect the new facility to open in late-2018, pending approval.
The project’s public hearing will continue at 9 a.m. Tuesday at the DoubleTree by Hilton in South Burlington.
